I am an author, ecologist, filmmaker, and President of the Dancing Star Foundation (www.dancingstarfoundation.org) from which some of my recent non-fiction works (with Jane Gray Morrison) are available, including: Sanctuary: Global Oases of Innocence (Foreword by the 4th Queen of Bhutan); God's Country: The New Zealand Factor (Preface by PETA's President, Ingrid Newkirk), and Donkey: The Mystique of Equus Asinus.
As for my fiction, recent works are available from Zorba Press (http://zorbapress.com/?page_id=90).
My most intense and sweeping novel is the 1836-page illustrated ecological epic - a work of 25 years and research in over 80 countries - The Adventures of Mr. Marigold, available in hardback and e-book.

The Heart of Education: A Discussion with Zoe Weil

Zoe Weil is a long-time leader in humane education in the U.S., and throughout the world. As president of the Institute for Humane Education, which she co-founded in 1996, and as author of numerous books, Ms. Weil has passionately championed a movement which, she says, has the “potential to solve every problem we face and create a restored, healthy, and humane world for all.” Her TEDx talk, “The World Becomes What You Teach” eloquently conveys the essence of humane education and its importance to all living creatures.

Michael Tobias: Zoe, what is unique about the Institute of Humane Education? How broad is it, in terms of the environment, animals, humans themselves, and the future of our planet?

Zoe Weil: At the Institute for Humane Education (IHE) we offer the only graduate programs in comprehensive humane education, as well as online courses, workshops, Summer Institutes, and a free, award-winning resource center. IHE believes that education is the fundamental root solution to injustice, exploitation, and destruction, and our programs are designed to help people become humane educators who can teach others within traditional and non-traditional educational venues. Humane education has four elements that are keys to its power and success, and these include: 1) providing accurate information about the pressing issues of our time so people have the knowledge they need to address global challenges; 2) fostering the 3 Cs of curiosity, creativity, and critical thinking so people have the skills they need to address challenges; 3) instilling the 3 Rs of reverence, respect, and responsibility, so people have the will to address challenges, and 4) providing positive choices and the tools for problem-solving, so people can solve challenges.

Zoe Weil: While there are many ways in which humanity is becoming less violent, less prejudiced, and less cruel, the reality of a warming planet with over 7 billion people and limited resources means we face potential economic, social, and environmental catastrophes. While every generation has faced its challenges, only in this century do we confront the possible loss of half of all species on earth, with the simultaneous breakdown of the ecosystems which sustain us all. At the same time, through the Internet, only in this century do we now have the capacity to work together across every border, and collaborate and innovate so quickly and powerfully. There is great and realistic hope that we can solve the challenges we face and transform dysfunctional, inhumane, and destructive systems, but we’ll be hard-pressed to succeed if children in school continue to be taught under centuries-old models, and if our grand purpose for schooling remains to “compete in the global economy,” which is the buzz phrase of our time regarding education reform.

Zoe Weil: Of course our children need to become verbally, mathematically, and scientifically proficient, but these are foundational tools, not endpoints. At IHE, we believe that the goal of schooling in today’s world ought to be to provide all students with the knowledge, tools, and motivation to be conscientious choice makers and engaged change makers for a prosperous, healthy, just, and humane world for all people, animals, and the environment, or as we like to put it: we need to graduate a generation of solutionaries.

Michael Tobias: What are the typical impediments to introducing a humane “agenda” in public and/or private school curricula and in this country?

Zoe Weil: Public schools lack funds, freedom, and flexibility. They’re inclined to teach-to-test so as to ensure that they maintain funding, so anything that doesn’t immediately improve standardized, bubble test scores can’t easily gain a foothold. Meanwhile, our country is so politically polarized that anything that smacks of controversy is often automatically excluded, dumbing down the curriculum. A couple of years ago I spoke at a middle school assembly program, and I began by asking the kids what they thought were the biggest problems in the world. One boy said “war.” I agreed with him that war was a big problem. After the talk was over, the principal was very upset. We had a long talk, and he told me he was concerned that he’d get calls from angry parents who were veterans or who had a spouse serving in Iraq or Afghanistan. So I asked him to go into each classroom and ask the kids what they learned from my talk. I had spoken about the need to make connections between our choices and their effects on others; to model the message they hoped to convey in the world; to pursue joy in life by being of service, and to take responsibility for their actions.

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Zoe Weil’s message is critical reading for every educator the world over. I truly hope that U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan will study Ms. Weil’s all-important message and find appropriate settings in which to introduce humane studies as a key pillar in American learning, whether in such arenas as private or public, or home-schooled.

The ninth U.S. Secretary of Education has posted on his link (http://www2.ed.gov/news/staff/bios/duncan.html) the following summary of his efforts to date, since his U.S. Senate confirmation January 20th, 2009, following President Obama’s choice of Duncan as the top candidate for one of THE MOST important components of any vibrant democracy looking to the future for solutions, solvency, virtue and innovation.

Writes Duncan’s staff:

“Duncan’s tenure as secretary has been marked by a number of significant accomplishments on behalf of American students and teachers. He helped to secure congressional support for President Obama’s investments in education, including the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’s $100 billion to fund 325,000 teaching jobs, increases in Pell grants, reform efforts such as Race to the Top and the Investing in Innovation, and interventions in low-performing schools. Additionally, he has helped secure an additional $10 billion to avoid teacher layoffs; the elimination of student loan subsidies to banks; and a $500 million national competition for early learning programs. Under Duncan’s leadership at the Department, the Race to the Top program has the incentives, guidance, and flexibility it needs to support reforms in state…”

All of these important initiatives are, in my opinion, verging towards a penumbra of lost opportunities if humane education, as outlined here by Ms. Weil, is not embraced and perceived with the passionate and widely diffuse institutional enshrinement it requires and deserves. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, as well as most of the signatories to the Declaration of Independence, following upon two thousand years of classical training, certainly grasped this essential: humaneness in everything we study; love in all of the received wisdom; compassion in each and every subject of inquiry.

Zoe Weil has firmly, reasonably, and with contagious idealism marked the path, shone a beacon, laid the groundwork, for a revolution in truly sustainable education. That necessarily translates into “humane education”. This is the time, this is the generation, these are the challenges which educators, parents, students and administrators must collectively resolve to enshrine.

“No Child Left Behind” should rapidly evolve, in my opinion, into a public policy that fully and with bold, imaginative strokes, lays out a tenable plan that should read something like, “No Child Left Without His/Her Humanity”; no waivers on compassionate education; no excuses for dodging the most critical framework we have ever witnessed in the annals of educational curricula, namely, a humane, loving, tender light touch, whether discussing “Hamlet,” the Roman Empire, the 22 noteworthy human civilizations that have ecologically over-extended themselves, ending up all but tangibly bankrupt. Humane education has THE key role in addressing all of the pressing problems of the past, the present and the likely future under the umbrella of a calm distribution of non-violence as it pertains to, and emerges within, everything we expect of ourselves, our loved ones, and most of all – those torchbearers who happen to be our children.

As Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young once penned, let us “Teach your children” (well); let us set the example and use the superb template achieved by Ms. Weil -and that of her many colleagues – in formulating new and visionary approaches to the handing down of knowledge between generations and peer groups; pen-pals and strangers; the pre-adaptive “education gene” for future experiments in kindness, caring and true love. If we can do that, and do it well, we shall have acquitted any and all doubts as to whether human beings have what it takes to solve unprecedented conundrums and all-out assaults on the very biological regenerative capacities of the Earth. Our hearts and minds must be in sync with this grand (but not grandiose) educational experiment, which has already been up and running under Zoe’s tutelage for many many years.

Zoe’s message prepares the groundwork for that startling synchronicity of the life force, and the insatiable potential and curiosity in all children, and in their teachers. Let us work together, mend ideological wounds and stride into new territories of communal, interdependent symbiosis: between an evolving biological world, and a fast morphing human mind and ever-expressive human heart.

Zoe Weil’s beautiful experiences in helping to effect such causes and effects is proof positive that humane education not only works, but is the very future we are all dreaming of. It starts today.

Thank you, Zoe, for helping to nurture an exquisite revolution in teaching and receiving. You have truly revealed, as I term it, the heart of education.

So happy that this message is getting out there! A big thank you to Forbes for giving Humane Education a great platform and an even bigger thank you to Zoe for being such a wonderful voice promoting such a powerful and important educational paradigm.

Thank you for sharing this article. The system of education needs to change to meet the challenges of our times, and we hear this and talk about it as educators all too often. The approach described in this model of education is food for thought! Yes, we as parents and teachers prepare our youth for college, but then what? How much knowledge is available to our students that they may address global concerns and really benefit themselves and others from an education…? In my experience, I see students who could do so much better with a broader palate to stimulate perceptions and thought. They are often bored or disconnected in an outdated system. The way of learning has changed with global access and being savvy with nontraditional tools. Our students are ready, and with such a framework, we can hope that the world becomes what we teach! Brilliant examples such as this one are a step in the right direction.

Humane education has to be a huge part of any plan to restore sanity to the public discourse. People who want to see this kind of compassionate approach to learning in their schools should consider running for election to their school boards. A big reason that things have regressed so much in American education is the kind of narrow thinking that shapes local public school policy. If we want humane schools, we need to elect humanitarians to our school boards.

Thank you for highlighting the work of this remarkable woman. I share her conviction that the way to change the world is to change the way we educate our children. As an early childhood educator, I have long thought that the work being done around the world by those of us working with infants, toddlers and preschoolers should provide the model for how we approach primary and secondary school education.

Early Childhood teachers incorporate the basic skills every child needs to be successful in an academic environment (skills in early literacy, numeracy, the scientific method, how to use tools like scissors and pencils, etc.). We also give equal, perhaps more, focus to communication and interpersonal skills.

In an early childhood classroom, children are learning to express their ideas, negotiate for their needs, recognize other perspectives, make decisions, take pride in their individuality and feel compassion for others. We lay a foundation for children to make their way in the world as collaborators and creative problem solvers. Then, as they leave our nest and go off to elementary school, we wonder and we worry about what lies ahead for them in primary school classrooms where the focus of their work will most likely be on what they need to know to pass a test, where their creativity and self-expression will take a back seat to sitting still and listening to what the grownups have decided is important, where the name of the game is status quo.

Some of Zoe Weil’s counterparts in the mission to educate our children to be what Weil has termed solutionaries reside in the city of Reggio Emilia, Italy. There, for more than half a century, parents, town officials and early childhood educators have resolved to create schools (http://zerosei.comune.re.it/inter/index.htm) where children are recognized for their innate competencies. They share a vision of and for children that recognizes the power and capability children possess from birth, and they have designed municipal schools for children from infancy through age 6 that are world renowned as a model for democratic and humane education.

I applaud the work of Zoe Weil, her Center for Humane Education and my colleagues in the field of early childhood education for this hopeful vision for a healthier world. - Molly Thompson, Breakwater School, Portland, ME

Thanks so much for your comment Molly. I’m excited to check out these Italian schools you mentioned! Sounds wonderful. I will be in Portland May 10-11 (debut of my 1-woman show, “My Ongoing Problems with Kindness: Confessions of MOGO Girl on May 10, 7:30 at Frontier Cafe Theater in Brunswick and a reception at 5:30 at the Think Tank in Portland on May 11)

The four principles Zoe Weil describes as key to Humane Education make such simple and obvious sense. Ms. Weil’s formula should be embraced by educators, parents and others throughout the world. As trite as the word “empowerment” seems to have become, Zoe Weil’s four-pronged educational approach is clearly the key to ‘empowering’ all of us, young and older. I have wondered if, indeed, hope could replace despair in this world. Ms. Weil has given me confidence that it can.